Building a Web site first seemed like a daunting task. In my experience the most important step when designing a site is the planning process. The first step in the planning process is to understand the needs of audience you are targeting and to delineate the goal of the Web site. My Web site was developed to serve the patrons of an Academic library with the goal of providing users with information and resources on how to identify and distinguish scholarly journals from popular magazines
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Having defining my audience and the objectives of my Web site I was able to create a storyboard in order to plan the flow of the Web site. Storyboarding was an effective step that forced me to take an even closer look at my audience and critically evaluate my goals. During this segment of the process I was able to further flush out ideas to ensure that the navigational flow is effective and that information is grouped in an intuitive and user friendly manner. Once I had completed my storyboard it became the blueprint for me to begin developing my pages. I also wanted all of my pages to be linked and for navigation to be consistent across all pages to ensure a consistence look, feel and functionality I first designed a main page with would become the template for all of my other pages. (I later learned that use cascading style sheets would also produce this consistent feel and allow me to quickly make future changes to all sheets simultaneously.)
On this main page I included standard navigation bars that appear at both the top and bottom of all of the pages as well as a date notation that indicated the date the page is updated. Using this strategy ensured that all pages share the same color scheme, lay-out style, and fonts.
To populate my Web site the content was adapted and from material that I had gathered and created for another GSLIS class. The storyboarding process helped me and organization the existing information that I had an to organize into smaller summary paragraphs that would provide readers with a clear definition and that could be linked to related definitions. During this editing process it was helpful for me to draw upon experiences that I have had while navigation other Web sites to ensure that my planned information flow was smooth and intuitive.
Having worked through all of the in class exercises I felt well prepared to begin coding my Web pages. With the help of Wendy Lehnert’s HTML book, the class exercises and a few on-line tutorials the coding was a pretty simple process.
The best advice that I would have to anyone beginning this process and that may feel a little intimidated at the idea of creating a webpage or a multi paged Web site is to break each page down into a series of smaller projects and work through each projects one at a time. Each of these mini projects could even be identify on your storyboard. Your first project may be to create a header, then to add a link to another site or add a picture, or to build a table. One you have completed you first page then, move on and begin programming you next page. Once you have completed you first page go back and review it and don’t be afraid modify it if you feel a different design would better serve the web sites users.
Overall I found that building a website is very much like writing a research paper; the better prepared and organized that you are the easier the process and the better the ultimate outcome. 
Wikis are a great way to capture local content and build community.
In the world of internet search engines what could possibly be bigger then Google? In the USA no one is bigger then Google and they are continuing to grow. According to an April 2007 comscore.com report Google is continuing to grow its market share and a accounts for 49.7 of US internet searches.
A more recent July 12, 2007 Market share report by Net Applications also point out that Google continues to be the dominate search engine and accounts for over 53% of all searches in the U.S. Despite the conflicting data it is a generally accepted fact that Google is the top search engine in the US and the number one search engine in the world. Google has become so omni present in the internet world even the word Google has become a verb for many.
Given the success of the companies ability to Googlize the earth and dominate the internet I was intrigued by an article that I read recently in the New York Times about a place where “Google isn’t king.”
According to the article Web uses in South Korea, one of the world’s most wired countries, seldom “Google” anything. They “Naver” it. The article goes on to point out that “Naver.com” accounts for more that 77% of all Web searches in South Korea and that Google handles a mere 1.7% of South Korean Web searches.
According to one source quoted in the article “the big problem with Google is that it does not have enough Korean-language data to trawl to satisfy South Korean customers.” It also states that to be successful in South Korea a search engine needs to create it own databases and content.
Reading more about Naver it seems to me like a cross between a Wiki and an online reference service. With over 16 million visitors per day Naver relies on tens of thousands of volunteer respondents to answer questions and post responses. From these volunteers Naver has accumulated a user-generated database of over 70 million entries.
According to the article Naver.com feeds a sense of community and its success has largely been fueled by a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web.
I found the entire article fascinating and a great model for libraries to follow to further build a sense of community among the patrons that they serve.
On a local basis who knows more about a community then its members? What better place then the library to act as a community information portal? Taking a lead from the Naver model all libraries should consider adding a local knowledge Wiki as a component of their service offerings. A local Wiki would provide libraries with a great way to connect their users and share knowledge. Wikis are also a great way to capture community content that may not otherwise be available on the internet. They are also a great way to build communities.
